


dear lord, when i get to heaven

by amsves



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, It's not incest they're not real brothers, M/M, Mental Instability, POV Second Person, Rolo Requiem, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love, as per canon, basically r2 but rolo's version, fluff with an angsty ending, lots of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-11
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-10-02 13:39:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10219526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amsves/pseuds/amsves
Summary: Your name is Rolo Lamperouge—at least, that is your current name. You are sixteen years old. You have light brown hair and violet eyes, and have killed more people than you could possibly keep track of, even if you wanted to. You don’t like sweets much, but make an exception for pastries. You think that someday, if you could get away for long enough, you would like to go to the sea.





	

Your name is Rolo Lamperouge—at least, that is your current name. You are sixteen years old. You have light brown hair and violet eyes, and have killed more people than you could possibly keep track of, even if you wanted to. You don’t like sweets much, but make an exception for pastries. You think that someday, if you could get away for long enough, you would like to go to the sea.  
  
Your mission is simple: watch over the disgraced prince and ex-terrorist Lelouch vi Britannia. You are to report on his every move, and make sure that he does not regain his memories. You have your orders to kill him if something goes wrong.  
  
But nothing will go wrong. You are very good at what you do.  
  
You can’t help but be good at murder and assassination; after all, that’s all you know.  
  
You were a little surprised when you learned that you were to act as his little brother, since you have never had a family, have never known the love that only those connected by blood can share. You have never had someone to comfort you when you fall, to tuck you into bed at night and kiss your forehead, to hold you close when the nightmares come creeping back in the dead of night when you are alone (but you’re always alone, so you’re not sure why they come at all—it’s not like your life isn’t a living hell, anyways), to play with outside, to help with homework, to laugh with, to cry with …  
  
But you graciously accept the assignment. Killing and spying is all that you know; why would you turn down an opportunity to be useful?  
  
Another has come before you—Clara—but she let her guard down and died in by the hands of a spy. You will not make the same mistakes.   
  
In the days before you are to begin your new life as Rolo Lamperouge, younger brother of Lelouch Lamperouge, student and member of the student council of Ashford Academy, you throw yourself into your research. You are not just sneaking in, stopping time, and shooting this time. You are replacing a living, breathing princess, and you must do your job well. In your research, in every waking moment spent gathering information on the Princess Nunnally, you learn that her—your—birthday is on October 25th. You learn that she is not actually blind, but that Charles has altered her memory, just like he has done to her—your—brother. You learn that she has been practicing her origami cranes, and that she believes in that Eleven legend that one thousand folded cranes can make wishes come true.   
  
(One night, in the solitude of your bedroom, after all the other children have gone to sleep, you slip out to the computer room and search for ‘how to fold a paper crane.’ your first attempt is sloppy at best and downright unrecognizable at worst, but you smile all the same. Maybe, if you practice, you can be good at something besides taking lives.)  
  
Soon, it is time to go to Ashford Academy. You slip into the clothes given to you, grab the suitcases provided for you with clothes—normal civilian clothes, instead of the uniforms worn by the children of the cult—and a new leather notebook. On the cover, embossed so faintly that you think it might have been an afterthought, are the words ‘Lelouch Lamperouge.’ You are to record his every move.   
  
He welcomes you placidly, without the affection you will come to know, as if he does not quite remember you. That does not surprise you, considering you two have never met, not really. You settle in to Nunnally’s—your—room, carefully move all of your new clothes into your dresser, and flop down onto your bed. It is more comfortable than the beds at the cult were, but you can’t help but feel uneasy. You go to bed early that night, and when you wake up, your eyes are sticky, like you have been crying.  
  
In the following days Lelouch quickly warms up to you, like he had forgotten how to interact with you but has quickly fallen back into step. You eat breakfast and dinner together, and walk to class together (when Lelouch bothers to go). You drive him away on Rivalz’ motorcycle when he needs to escape Villetta-sensei, and attend to student council matters together. Lelouch seems to think that you are his real brother and treats you appropriately, which is both a relief and a strangely disconcerting sensation. You are not used to anyone caring about you.  
  
When you mention that your hair is getting too long, he offers to cut it in the courtyard like he always has. He looks at you strangely for a moment, like he can’t believe you would have forgotten. You quickly make amends and vow to be more careful in the future.  
  
He gives you a locket on Nunnally’s—yours, now—birthday. It must have been purchased beforehand, when Nunnally, his real sister, still occupied Lelouch’s thoughts instead of you, his fake brother—because why would your brother give you a locket?—but you treasure it anyways. It is a gift, given freely to you by one who loves you without strings or expectations of reciprocation. You attach it to your cellphone and take it with you everywhere you go. It is the one thing that you have that is truly yours.  
  
He teaches you piano. He remembers that he has always been teaching you, since you were old enough to climb onto the bench yourself; you know that this is not true, but laugh and claim that you have all but forgotten during your stay abroad. It is fortunate that you are a fast learner. You pick it up quickly, and Lelouch does not seem too fazed.   
  
Nunnally had liked sweets, it seems, because Lelouch keeps them around, though you never sees him eat any. You push down his disgust at the overly-sugary taste and eat them whenever prompted. It is a small price to pay.  
  
She must have also liked bedtime stories, because on days when you are ready to tear your hair out, whether because of a difficult member of the Intelligence Service whom you are ready to shoot or simply because of an algebra problem, Lelouch will knock on your bedroom door, book of fairy stories tucked under his arm. He will sit beside you on the bed after you have climbed under the covers and read you stories of men who steal from the rich and give to the poor, and of wishes granted not by the power of Geass or paper cranes but by magic, and of happily ever after. He will move your bangs off of your forehead and kiss you goodnight, and in the morning he will have cooked you breakfast. It is scary, how close the reality of family is to how you had imagined it when you were young and naive.   
  
(You don’t tell anyone—not Villetta-sensei, not Lelouch, not your student council friends—but you are still working on your paper cranes. You have probably folded three hundred or so, but they have become like your body count, and so you let the number escape you. It makes more sense, you figure, to wish on every crane as you make it, so that when you unknowingly fold the final one you have already expressed your wish. That way, you can make sure that you remember to do so, because wouldn’t it be a shame and a waste of paper if you folded the thousand and then didn’t wish at all?)  
  
And then one day, everything changes.   
  
That witch C.C. must have found him somehow, because Lelouch has regained his memories. He doesn’t tell you, but you know. You know because he tenses ever so slightly when he sees you next, how his voice is full of fake mirth and carelessness, how inquires about the locket. He offers to take it back and exchange it for something more suited to a man, and that is how you know for sure, because Lelouch had never seemed to notice how out-of-place it was until that point. You can’t keep yourself from snapping at him in anger, because how dare he want to take the only thing that truly belongs to you? The locket may have been meant for Nunnally once upon a time, but it is _yours_ now. Lelouch lets the subject drop, but you know that something has changed.  
  
That night, you nearly crush the locket in your fist as you bite your lip to keep from crying yourself to sleep.  
  
Eventually, he confronts you, and offers you a deal, that if you help him save his sister then when this is all over you can be a real family. _We already are a family!_ you want to scream, want to carve the words into his skin with your fingernails because how dare he forget, but you do not, because you’re not a family, not really. You have been gifted with a year of bliss and care and love, and that is more than you deserve. You should not have let your guard down.   
  
You accept.   
  
His schemes are despicable, that much you acknowledge, but they are no different from yours, fundamentally. His are flashy and loud while yours depend on your stealth and silence. His are waged in broad daylight, with an adoring public cheering his name as he slaughters people in the names of Justice and Nunnally. (Sometimes, you think that those two names have become confused in his head, have forged into one, because when he cries for the first you know that he yearns only for the second, because what he does could never be called Justice, because you have it on good authority that the death of so many innocent people can never be justified like he says it can.) Your only grudge against him is that the sea of innocent blood that you have carefully cultivated for years he has achieved in only a few weeks.   
  
You find your brother, one night, after Nunnally has introduced herself to the populace as the long-lost Nunnally vi Britannia, in an empty construction site. You arrive slightly too late, but what you can see is that Kallen is there, and that Lelouch seems to be coming on to her. Your hand is on you gun before you can think rationally here, and the barrel is pointed at Kallen when she slaps Lelouch across the face. You sigh, and tuck your gun back inside your jacket. She storms off, and you run up to your brother and do your best to do what he always does to you, to give him comfort in his darkest moments. It is in this moment that you realize just how deeply he loves his sister, and how whatever love he has spared for you is not enough. Now that you have had a taste, you will always want for more.   
  
You take him home and put him up in his bed. He looks so peaceful, sleeping soundly, dark hair splayed across the white bedsheets. He looks older, more worn, more exhausted than you have ever seen him before. In this state, he reminds you of one of the fairy stories he has read you before, the one about the woman with the hair as dark as night, and skin as pale as paper, and lips as red as blood. Lelouch’s hair isn’t quite black—more of a dark chocolate brown, but it is close—and his lips are nowhere near red as blood—they’re more of a petal-pink, like the cherry blossoms in the school courtyard—but his skin is very nearly pale as paper, which makes the bags underneath his eyes stand out. (You prefer it that way, honestly. Between the two of you, there has been enough blood spilled.) In that story, you remember, the woman had been cast out into the woods by people who wanted her dead, but she found companionship in seven friends. The parallels here are enough to make you smile ironically. In the story, a poisoned apple rendered her unconscious, but a prince comes along one day and wakes her with the power of true love’s kiss. You feel a bit silly, but you can’t help but brush his hair aside, can’t stop yourself from cupping his cheek—they’re cold to the touch, too cold, like ice runs through his veins instead of blood—can’t keep yourself from lowering your lips to his. You have never kissed anyone like this—you’ve never kissed anyone at all. It feels like a taboo, like you are not supposed to love him like you do, even though you are not brothers, not really. You don’t linger, just in case the magic works, but it becomes apparent that it did not. Maybe kisses aren’t really magic; maybe you should stick to your paper cranes.  
  
You stay by him constantly after that, keeping watch just in case he wakes up and reverts back to his previous state. As you were leaving the scene last night, you noticed the Refrain on the ground, and put two and two together. You swear to yourself that you will never let him near another vial of the only thing that can steal him away from you. He mumbles in his sleep, little bits of garbled gibberish that might have been words but have been confused by sleep. You stop trying to make sense of the not-words, and instead busy yourself in short bursts with preparing food for your brother—he is bound to be hungry when he wakes, after all. But Lelouch never wakes in time, and the food always goes cold, and you always end up scarfing it down instead, so as not to let it go to waste.   
  
When you are not cooking, you wait patiently by his bedside. You fold more cranes in that span of twenty-four hours than you have in the past month. Upon every one completed, you whisper your wish that is starting to sound more like a prayer.  
  
Once, he says something intelligible, gasps out his sister’s name like he is drowning and she is oxygen. It makes your blood boil, and when he inquires later, you claim that it did not happen, that he did not say anything at all.   
  
Too soon, you return to your role as murderer, as the one who shoots first and asks questions never, because the dead do not speak. The girl with ginger hair—Shirley, your friend from the Student Council—has regained her memories of Nunnally. She wants to reunite brother and sister. She pleads to you to help her, thinks that you will because you are her friend and because she does not know that they did not pick just anyone off the streets to play Lelouch’s brother but a trained assassin with a time-stopping ability. She does not know that the mere mention of Nunnally’s name is enough to send you into a rage, to remind you that you don’t belong here. You don’t even think about what you need to do.   
  
She dies in a pool of her own blood, cradled in your brother’s arms.   
  
Afterwards, you lie to him. You tell your brother that she was chasing him, that she remembered that he had killed her father and was coming to exact her revenge. He seems to believe you, and you fall a little deeper in love with your brother when he thanks you for protecting him. You tell him that you will always be there to protect him.   
  
(You are aware that he attaches a bomb to your Knightmare, are aware that he has not forgiven you for taking the life of one of his few friends, are aware that that simple mistake might have been enough to make him hate you forever, but you do not tell him that you regretted it, because you are not sure that you do.)  
  
Lelouch is caught in a trap by the Order of the Black Knights, but you come to his rescue, as you promised him just days ago. You break through the walls of their hideout in your Vincent before flying away, but that Knight of the Round that goes to your school—Anya, the one with pink hair—is chasing you. You know that you aren’t skilled enough to evade her, and you also know that your Knightmare can never outrun hers. You know that there is only one thing left to do, only one card left in your hand.  
  
You stop time. Over and over again. Your heart stops every time. You labor to breathe. Your brother cries out in pain every time that you do it, because he knows of your Achilles heel that you were careless enough to divulge, knows that you will die because of this. He pleads with you to stop, but you can’t, not now. This is your requiem, your atonement for your sins. You will deliver your big brother from evil, and you will take his cross as well as your own upon your shoulders and bear it into Hell for him. He must go on, must live on. You love him too much to watch him die, and thus you will have to die first.   
  
He attempts to convince you, in those final moments, that he is just like everyone else, that he has just been using you, but you won’t have it. You know that he truly did love you, maybe not as you loved him, maybe not as deeply as he loved Nunnally, but that does not matter. You can’t help but spill your thoughts, open your heart that does not beat in those final moments, even though he cannot hear you. “All throughout my life, people have used me like a tool,” you begin, though he is not listening, is frozen in time with the rest of them.   
  
When he comes unfrozen, he begs you to stop trying to save you, but you do not let him finish his sentence before you continue. “I was used by the Order … And then you used me, big brother … Yeah, maybe you've been using me for your ends right from the very start. But… only the time I spent with you seemed real!” Every time you stop your Geass, every time you snap back to reality to gasp for breath, he interrupts you, imploring you to stop wasting your life for him, but you can’t. You won’t.   
  
Your breath is coming in short bursts, when it comes at all. Your chest _hurts_ , like it is being torn in half. But still, you persist. “It was… those memories… that finally made me… human!” you gasp as you fly to your death. Your Geass deactivates prematurely, against your will. “That's why I'm not…” You cannot summon it again. Your body, it seems, still has some self-preservation instincts that your brain cannot override.   
  
“I'm not…” Finally, you activate your Geass one final time. You know it, then, that you will never use it again, that you will not make it out of this alive. “I'm not… a tool! I do this… out of my own… free will… as a human being!” From the time you were born, from the time you were conscious of your status as a slave to the cult, this is all that you have wanted.  
  
(So why don’t you want it now? Why don’t you want to be your own person? Why don’t you want to make your own choices? To save the person you love? To be useful?  
  
Why don’t you want to die?)  
  
You crash-land, and Lelouch demands to know why you did what you did. You don’t have the heart, even now, to tell him the whole truth, so you settle for what he can stomach. “Because… you're a liar, big brother,” you explain. “It was… a lie, wasn't it? What you said about trying to kill me, about… hating me and all of that.”  
  
He assures you that you are correct, and your still heart breaks, because you know him well enough to know when he is lying. You know now, as he comforts you in your final moments, that he is lying, that he has never once loved you like you thought he did, not since he remembered his real family. Still, you pretend to believe him, to ease his pain. You may be the one dying, but he is the one who will have to live, and that is infinitely more painful.   
  
“That's right, I thought so, 'cause I know who you really are inside your heart. I know everything about you, big brother.”  
  
Those are the last words to come out of your mouth.  
  
You retain your consciousness for several seconds afterwards, though you are too weak to move. You feel your brother place your cellphone, locket dutifully attached, as always, in your cooling hand, hear him agree with you one last time, feel a single tear drip from his eye and onto your sleeve. You remember the story about the woman, and the legend about the cranes. Though the former may have been nothing but a story, the latter certainly must be true. You must have folded well over a thousand cranes, you reason, because your wish has come true.  
  
Lelouch, your brother, may not love you like you loved him, but he loved you enough to shed a tear for you upon your death.   
  
You close your eyes. That is enough for you.

**Author's Note:**

> hey fun fact: rolo was buried by the sea
> 
> come scream/cry with me: http://senpai-san.tumblr.com/


End file.
